Current major white light emission is blue light LED plus yellow yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) phosphor, these patents are beneficial to Nichia Chemical Corporation and German OSRAM Opto Semiconductors, such as YAG white LED patent (U.S. Pat. No. 6,066,861) for Nichia Chemical Corporation and white LED patent (U.S. Pat. No. 6,066,861) for German OSRAM Opto Semiconductors. Lite-on Electronics Co. Ltd., Everlight Electronics Co. Ltd. and Harvatek Corporation are authorized by OSRAM Opto Semiconductors since the end of 2003. However, deficient red spectrum of emitting causes poor reproducibility of red light.
For improve luminous efficiency of phosphors, Lumileds Lighting Corporation and Sandia National Laboratory (SNL) co-develop quantum dot phosphor technology (U.S. Pat. No. 6,501,091) in National Solid State Lighting Initiative of Department of Energy (DOE).
Currently, it is gradually paying respect to use silicon quantum dots for light emitting diode (LED) even use in white LED. It is base on high yield, low cost, non-toxicity and fully compatible with semiconductor processing of Silicon materials.
Silicon quantum dot contains silicon dioxide (SiO2) and silicon nitrite (Si3N4) as its matrix. Current technical data shows that silicon dioxide (SiO2) as matrix of silicon quantum dots only produce red light—infrared red section of spectrum.
If silicon nitrite (Si3N4) utilized as matrix, it will produce homochromatic light source of blue, green, yellow or red light etc. under the condition of varying experimental parameters. The primary processing methods today are low temperature (<500° C.) process, plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and a series of annealing process, please see M. Sopinskyy, V. Khomchenko/Current Opinion in Solid State and Material Science 7(2003) p. 97-109.
Silicon nitrite (Si3N4) is used as matrix currently, it can produce orange light source and its external quantum efficiency is greater than 1.6% (Applied Physics Letters 86, (2005)071909). Until now silicon quantum dots is unable to be used worldwide as optical active layer and to produced all-white spectrum (400˜700 nm wavelength range) of white LED.